alandd wrote:I am consistently surprised that the church does not use more Free Software and Open Source Software for the foundation of it's infrastructure. ...
I use Linux at home on all my computers. Using church produced software and digital media is a problem because it's based on closed products and formats. ...
I also assume that the church would like to bring computer automation and digital distribution to developing countries with growing church membership. So I am baffled why technologies that cost man-months wages in those countries are used as a platform for digital growth.
I also use only Linux at home, and my personal wish would be for the Church to move more quickly in the direction of open formats and such. However, I greatly appreciate the great progress the Church is making in that direction. A few years ago, you couldn't get general conference audio or video in any format that could be played on a Linux system. Now, between OSS players being better able to play closed formats and the Church moving in the direction of cross-platform (if maybe not entirely open) formats like MP3, there are multiple formats that can be played. I wish I had time to find it to put a link here, but there was a thread a few years ago about the Church's roadmap for current and future media formats. Cross-platform and open formats occupied a large slice of that roadmap, much more than they did a few years earlier.alandd wrote:...
The church IT/development department does a fabulous job with impressive results and I am thankful for what they produce. I just want to understand more about why closed platforms and formats are supported while open ones are neglected or ignored despite the benefits to be had there.
I also think you might be surprised at the extent to which the Church _IS_ using open source software. I'm told the newFamilySearch servers are basically all Linux. I downloaded a community project to hopefully contribute. During the first test build, I was rather pleased at the number of names of open source pieces that are part of the Church's Java Stack.